Talat defines missing Cypriots as humanitarian issue

"The TRNC will maintain its financial and moral support to searches to find missing persons," Talat said during a visit to an anthropology laboratory in the buffer zone in Cyprus which is identifying missing persons.Â

Talat also donated $50,000 to the Committee on Missing Persons carrying out excavations to find missing persons.

The Turkish Cypriot leader said he thought the project was being accomplished as it was not politicized.

Talat also said that the project was being implemented and progressing very well.

Established by Turkish and Greek Cypriot representatives, the Committee on Missing Persons put into practice a new project and launched excavations at the end of 2004 after almost 20 years of slow and insufficient initiatives.

Since then, the committee have unearthed the remains of almost 470 missing persons. Thirty-two of them were Turkish Cypriots, and 115 of them were Greek Cypriots. Identified remains were returned to the surviving relatives of those who went missing.

Some 1,970 people were reported missing, including 502 Turkish Cypriots, when the excavations were launched. This number officially dropped to 1,855 in the fifth year of the project. As long as excavations continue, the number of missing people will decline.

The committee is headed by Christophe Girod, a representative of the United Nations. Gulden Plumer Kucuk is representing the Turkish Cypriot side, and Elias Georgiades is representing the Greek Cypriot side.